Sunday, July 29, 2012

The 第 четыре 个星期

Hello again! Has it already been a week? I have so much to talk about, but the time is passing by so quickly here. I only have two more weeks here, which is sad. But on the other hand, I still have two weeks here, which is great.

This week was all about making new friends. From China, from Russia, and from America. I can now say that I have sung Justin Beiber's "Baby" in Karaoke. Which I would be ashamed of, except me, an American, sang it in China with a Russian. Definitely not something you do everyday. On a slightly more musical note, I also got to sing fun.'s We Are Young this week at good old ktv.

It all started on Monday. The week, I mean. We got invited to a friends house for dinner. It was the first time I've had dinner at a Chinese friends home, and it was really interesting. The culture towards guest is much more complex than in America. The place you sit at the table, who eats the fish first, who gets served tea first, what you talk about, what you eat, how much you eat, all depends on whether you are a guest or not, and also how high you rank in the "guest hierarchy" (well, that's what I call it). Afterwards, my friend's dad served us really expensive tea on his personal tea making table. It was really interesting to watch. I didn't taste the tea, but it smelled pretty good.

On Tuesday, we went out with some other Chinese friends my American friend made to explore Zhengzhou. Zhengzhou is developing very rapidly. Not only are the buildings getting taller and I see construction all over the place, but also the streets are often getting redone. We went to the city's most developed spots ant took some pictures. The tower behind us is still under construction, but it will be the highest building in ZZ once it's done.

Here's us with our three Chinese friends (Jessica's taking the photo...thanks)

Who could this be?

On Wednesday I wend to an orphanage for mentally handicapped kids. It really made me think. While it was fun to play with the kids and watch their faces when they saw that I wasn't Chinese, being there also made me think more about what I can do to change this kind of circumstance in China. I was inspired to help more.

Wednesday night I talked with my family about the differences in America and China - especially about working and career differences. There are a lot, but I won't go into them now.

On Thursday I went shopping for Chinese pens, which I love to use, because they are made specifically for writing characters. After school, I did homework, studying for the friday test, and then my family took me out to eat. The food was really good. Especially the sheep kidney. Well, I think it was kidney. It tasted like meat, but the spices they put on the meat were amazing. The cow stomach was also pretty good.

Well, I just wrote all about friday and saturday, but my computer decided to play a trick on me and it deleted all of what I had written. Just know that those two days were awesome. I have to go. I'll tell you about them later.